Welsh Journals

Sir Cennydd Traherne, K.G., T.D., li.d., 1910-95 The society records with regret the death of its President, Sir Cennydd Traherne, on 26 January, 1995 at the age of eighty-four. Several obituary notices have appeared in national newspapers. He was educated at Wellington College and at Brasenose College, Oxford, and received a legal training. His distinguished wartime career in the army included a landing in France on D-Day plus one, and a later mention in dispatches. He was associated with many organisations at national and local level as patron, president or chairman, and he gave them his committed support. The story has been related how he acquired his name 'Cennydd': apparently his Scottish mother wished to name her son 'Kenneth' after an ancient Scottish king, but the Welsh-speaking clergyman officiating at the christening wrote down the form 'Cennydd' in the parish register, and so bestowed a name which proved particularly appropriate to its bearer, who took a lifelong pride in his Welsh ancestry and gave devoted service to his country. Sir Cennydd became Lord-Lieutenant of Glamorgan in 1952, and was Lord- Lieutenant of the Three Counties of Glamorgan from 1974 until his retirement in 1985. He was knighted in 1964 and made a Knight of the Garter in 1970. As Lord-Lieutenant, Sir Cennydd was Custos Rotulorum or Keeper of the Rolls, a title which carries responsibility for the care of the county's archives. As Custos he chaired the Glamorgan Records Committee, later the Glamorgan Archives Joint Committee, from 1952 to 1985. He took a keen interest in the work of the Record Office and supported its efforts to safeguard the area's all too vulnerable archival heritages. In 1956, in conjunction with Dr Richard John, he helped retrieve and promote the publication of a Glamorgan County History, a project which had been suspended at the outbreak of war in 1939 after the appearance of volume I. Over the following three decades five further volumes of the series were successfully published by the Glamorgan County History Trust. When Sir Cennydd delivered his Presidential Address to the Cambrian Archaeological Association in 1983, he took as his subject 'The Conquest of Glamorgan'. He examined the legend of Fitzhamon and his Twelve Knights, and in the light of his legal knowledge he advanced the theory that the story had come